Early vision impairs tactile perception in the blind.

Researchers have known for more than a century that crossing the hands can impair both tactile perception and the execution of appropriate finger movements. Sighted people find it more difficult to judge the temporal order when two tactile stimuli, one applied to either hand, are presented and their...

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Main Authors: Röder, B, Rösler, F, Spence, C
Format: Journal article
Language:English
Published: 2004
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author Röder, B
Rösler, F
Spence, C
author_facet Röder, B
Rösler, F
Spence, C
author_sort Röder, B
collection OXFORD
description Researchers have known for more than a century that crossing the hands can impair both tactile perception and the execution of appropriate finger movements. Sighted people find it more difficult to judge the temporal order when two tactile stimuli, one applied to either hand, are presented and their hands are crossed over the midline as compared to when they adopt a more typical uncrossed-hands posture. It has been argued that because of the dominant role of vision in motor planning and execution, tactile stimuli are remapped into externally defined coordinates (predominantly determined by visual inputs) that takes longer to achieve when external and body-centered codes (determined primarily by somatosensory/proprioceptive inputs) are in conflict and that involves both multisensory parietal and visual cortex. Here, we show that the performance of late, but not of congenitally, blind people was impaired by crossing the hands. Moreover, we provide the first empirical evidence for superior temporal order judgments (TOJs) for tactile stimuli in the congenitally blind. These findings suggest a critical role of childhood vision in modulating the perception of touch that may arise from the emergence of specific crossmodal links during development.
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spelling oxford-uuid:11b2589b-df17-49c6-a0f1-8ff9f7d899ee2022-03-26T10:03:44ZEarly vision impairs tactile perception in the blind.Journal articlehttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_dcae04bcuuid:11b2589b-df17-49c6-a0f1-8ff9f7d899eeEnglishSymplectic Elements at Oxford2004Röder, BRösler, FSpence, CResearchers have known for more than a century that crossing the hands can impair both tactile perception and the execution of appropriate finger movements. Sighted people find it more difficult to judge the temporal order when two tactile stimuli, one applied to either hand, are presented and their hands are crossed over the midline as compared to when they adopt a more typical uncrossed-hands posture. It has been argued that because of the dominant role of vision in motor planning and execution, tactile stimuli are remapped into externally defined coordinates (predominantly determined by visual inputs) that takes longer to achieve when external and body-centered codes (determined primarily by somatosensory/proprioceptive inputs) are in conflict and that involves both multisensory parietal and visual cortex. Here, we show that the performance of late, but not of congenitally, blind people was impaired by crossing the hands. Moreover, we provide the first empirical evidence for superior temporal order judgments (TOJs) for tactile stimuli in the congenitally blind. These findings suggest a critical role of childhood vision in modulating the perception of touch that may arise from the emergence of specific crossmodal links during development.
spellingShingle Röder, B
Rösler, F
Spence, C
Early vision impairs tactile perception in the blind.
title Early vision impairs tactile perception in the blind.
title_full Early vision impairs tactile perception in the blind.
title_fullStr Early vision impairs tactile perception in the blind.
title_full_unstemmed Early vision impairs tactile perception in the blind.
title_short Early vision impairs tactile perception in the blind.
title_sort early vision impairs tactile perception in the blind
work_keys_str_mv AT roderb earlyvisionimpairstactileperceptionintheblind
AT roslerf earlyvisionimpairstactileperceptionintheblind
AT spencec earlyvisionimpairstactileperceptionintheblind